


Like a terrible fish

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-14
Updated: 2011-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:44:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>‘Be a sport, Hallett. It’ll be a work of art,’ he grins as the camera whirrs and clicks.</i>
</p><p> </p><p><b>A/N:</b> Title from Sylvia Plath’s <a href="http://vmlinux.org/ilse/lit/plath.htm">'Mirror'</a>. Written for <span><a href="http://who-like-giants.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://who-like-giants.livejournal.com/"><b>who_like_giants</b></a></span> and beta’d by <span></span><a href="http://heddychaa.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://heddychaa.livejournal.com/"></a><b>heddychaa</b>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a terrible fish

  
‘Ianto fucking Jones, you are not taking naked pictures of me.’ She laughs wildly, using her legs to propel herself away from him as he points the camera at her. The gesture is inviting rather than invasive and she finds herself relaxing into the moment, something inside her uncurling, awakening.

‘Be a sport, Hallett. It’ll be a work of art,’ he grins as the camera whirrs and clicks.

‘It’ll be a naked woman who’s obviously just been fucking,’ she says dryly, but rolls over to take a look anyway. She prefers being behind the lens to being in front of it, but he doesn’t know that yet. She doesn’t know _him_ yet, except in curiously intimate fragments: the feel of his fingers in her hair, the sincerity of his gaze, the taste of his sweat. He’s a book she’s never going to finish reading, existing in her head through images and disjointed phrases like snatches of overheard conversation.

He’s caught her on her back, one leg raised and bent, her diamond bracelet still around her ankle where he’d playfully fastened it during their lovemaking. His tongue warm against the cool, delicate silver, her skin burning. He’d traced each link and whorl of the filigree, written on her skin with his tongue and fingertips, as meticulous about this as he is about everything else.

She hands the camera back, encouraging him to play, not saying that she’s never let anyone else touch it before, not saying that she hasn’t been this naked before. ‘How do you edit?’ he asks. His bright, intelligent eyes flick to her, and she knows he’ll soak up the information. He learns and studies and evolves before her eyes like a film on fast forward, his admiration and keenness more flattering to her than he’ll ever know.

‘Middle button on the right brings up the menu.’ She watches him fiddle with the settings and trails her foot against his calf, scrunching up her toes against his bare skin.

‘Tickles,’ he says absently, intent on his task. She leaves her foot on his leg and lies back, watching him, liking the gentle intimacy of sharing a bed like this. Liking that he had carefully tied up the used condom and dropped it in the waste paper basket instead of tossing it on the floor. Liking the little things that make him Ianto. _This_ , she thinks, this moment right now, is the most relaxed they’ve been around each other so far. He makes her wonder about the little things that make her Lisa. He puts absurd little fantasies in her head, like wondering if what they have is a short story or a drawn-out epic with magic and monsters and twisting, turning narratives. She wonders which of them Torchwood will kill first, imagines him dead and herself the mourner who is left behind, tragedy turning a chance encounter into an epic romance.

‘What d’you think?’ He hands her the camera, screen facing her. He’s too young, looking for approval.

‘I like it,’ she says immediately. He’s switched to monotone, the shades of black and white creating shadows where there had been none in colour, and sharpened the lines of her body so the diamonds around her ankle are cold hard glass, her vagina a blurred valley of darkness in the background.

She takes the camera from his hand and plays with a few buttons, flipping the image by a hundred and eighty degrees. The whites of her eyes are at the bottom of the screen now, hideous in their clarity, the pupils shiny and wet. Photograph-Lisa is looking at Ianto in a way that’s affectionate and sexual at once, the tone of the relationship between subject and photographer immediately apparent in the look, something that even a stranger would recognise. Somehow, the idea seems too intimate to share. She’s a fish on a hook and her scales are on the inside. Her skin a disguise, familiar and convenient.

Photograph-Lisa has eyes that are too bright, too much in focus, betraying what’s inside. Funny, she thinks, how the look in her eyes rather than her nakedness can make her uncomfortable, make her feel like a many-legged insect furling into itself against something alien. She wants to fold the moment like a scarf and slide it into a place in her memory that she’ll never visit again, hide it so it’ll never surprise her.

‘Lisa?’ Ianto touches her cheek lightly.

 _This is what you look like to him_ , she says to photograph-Lisa, the recognition so startling that looking into his eyes is like looking into a mirror. His eyes are blue like a lake, like sunlight dancing on water. There’s an image there too, half-developed, shaping itself tentatively in his gaze, waiting for her permission to fill itself with light and shade.

She smiles quickly and slides down his body, and it feels like moving through water, like learning how to swim. She parts his legs with her hands and moves between them, stretching out on her stomach like she’s marooning herself on a beach. The position is familiar. She’ll suck cock like she’s performing a ritual, the steps measured and rehearsed. She’ll make love to him the way she’s done with others, let her mouth guide her, let her senses get ensnared by him.

‘Hey,’ he says, his fingers in her hair, trying to voice a question he hasn’t yet learnt how to ask. She inhales against his skin, smelling sex and his lavender-scented shower gel, not looking at him yet.

She presses her lips to the crease at the inside of his thigh (knowing it drives him instantly wild), tasting herself in the wiry hair at the base of his cock (the moment immediately lost, like a discarded garment slipping from her shoulders), looking up and catching his gaze just as she lowers her mouth (chasing away his uncertainty with a grin, falling in love with him), elbowing the camera away (the image still rising to the surface of her mind, reaching for sunlight, refusing to be frozen).


End file.
